Running on Faith

Sometimes I pray for rain.  Sometimes I pray for sunshine.  Sometimes I pray for a cool front.  Sometimes I pray for more sleep.  I always pray that what I am doing will help someone else.  And these days, I am praying for something else: just to survive each workout.

My running mileage and intensity is going through the roof.  After only 3 days this week, I am already over 23 miles.  My legs are dead.  I am exhausted.  But somehow, I must keep going.

Yesterday’s run was not something I was looking forward to.  It was going to be a very long workout with some long intervals.  I started out with my 30 minute warm-up and the legs were (as usual) feeling a little dead.  After the 30 minutes, I stopped and stretched a bit while drinking some Gatorade.  In reality, I was trying to avoid hitting the start button because what followed were 5 intervals of 5 minutes each at a 7:10 to 7:35 pace with a 3 minute jog between them.  I did not want to start!

So I started saying some prayers.  Actually, it was one prayer. “God, get me through the first 4 intervals and I will take care of the last one.”  About 10 seconds after saying it, I added, “God, if You get me through the first 4, I know You will be doing the last one as well.”  And then I hit the button.

I am not going to lie and say they were easy and I was floating on clouds the whole time.  Not the case.  But I did do all five of them and hit my paces on every one.  I even fought through a cramping stomach on the third one and still made my pace.  So for that, Thank You God!

I ended up running over 10 miles during this “speed workout”.  And even though it was exhausting, I did it.  One more down.  One step closer.  One more prayer answered.

A big thank you to the members of St. James Lodge #47 in Baton Rouge for their most generous donation to St. Jude!

I skipped my workout today.  I was supposed to run for 30 to 40 minutes, but I didn’t.  I just skipped it.  For those who really know me, especially my wife, Christine, they know I never skip a workout.  I may have to run at 2:00 in the morning or in a thunderstorm or at noon when it is 100 degrees outside, but somehow I will find a way to workout.  But tonight, I didn’t even try.  I just skipped it.

I did work out the past three days.  And two of those days were hard interval type workouts.  But every time I would have to accelerate during my run I had the feeling similar to when you are running out of the ocean when you thought you saw a shark.  For the first few steps the water is fighting you as the panic increases until you finally break through and get up to speed.  And with several intervals like this during each workout, the feeling was multiplied.

Every morning I get out of bed and hobble to the bathroom to get dressed.  My legs hurt.  My feet hurt.  And I am usually tired.  It has unfortunately become a routine that I have gotten used to.

After my run last night, I was talking to my Dad.  He asked why I was running so much and I replied, “Because I want to qualify for Boston.”  Ironically, my boss asked me this morning why I was so serious when I run, and I replied, “Because I want to qualify for Boston.”  (He has passed me on road by my house in his truck while I was in the middle of one of my intervals and I refused to stop and chat.)  Even though my response to both of them was the same, it meant something different.

My boss knows I like to run and do triathlons.  He knows I am crazy.  He knows I will push my body and limp to work the next day.  But he doesn’t quite understand any of the details.

My dad, on the other hand, knows it all.  He is one of the few people who can remember what I used to be able to do as well as understanding what it takes to accomplish my goal.  He was there every step of the way when I was running in my youth.  So when I mentioned Boston, he quickly related things to what I could do back then.  And back then was 25 years ago.

My body, the 2009 42 year old model, is tired.  Of course it didn’t help matters that today I spent two hours in a dentist’s chair with a tooth that wasn’t quite deadened enough when he started drilling.  But that is another story.  For now, I am still stuck with having skipped my workout.  But it has made me step back and think.

Every year since 2005, I have been raising money for one charity or another.  I have enjoyed that part of my racing because it provides another sense of purpose to my activities.  And over the years, I have had some incredible friends donate a lot of money in support of my charity.  But so far this year, it appears that many are “skipping a workout.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining at all.  Many of them have given more than their share and with the current economic turmoil things are different this year.  Things are different in the world right now and many have other obligations to take care of.  Plus, they may be tired as well.

But then I remembered a show I saw this weekend about a patient at St. Jude.  The two year old little boy had a tumor on his brain that they were able to shrink with chemo……for a while.  His dad knew that time was short, but he said that while his son was smiling then he would smile too.  His son died about 6 months after the clip was taped.

Tired or not, I cannot stop.  I have to push on.  I have to keep going.  I have to keep asking people to donate.  Because if I don’t care enough to give my all, then why should I ask anyone else to.  So there won’t be too many skipped workouts…..at least not on my part.

(P.S.  My workout plan called this a recovery week.  It said to take an extra day off if needed.  Hee hee hee.  It wasn’t actually a skipped workout after all.)

That is something I am not very good at.  Especially when it concerns races or random acts of stupidity.  I was sitting here today attempting to get some work done while watching the Running on Faith emails fly back and forth.  Mixed up in the emails was a race link from Club South Runners mentioning a race in the middle of October.  And not just any race, but an 50K ultra marathon.  For those suffering from metric backlash, that is a 31 mile race.

It only took a couple of clicks of the mouse to pull up the race website, dates, and all other pertinent information.  And the adrenaline kicked in and all the gears in my head started turning about the possibilities.  This is exactly what I need….or is it?  (insert sound of screeching tires here.)

Okay.  Count to 10.  Take a deep breath.  Let’s try something new and think about this rationally.  And here was my thought process:

Angel: Would throwing a 31 mile trail run into the middle of training to qualify for the Boston Marathon be wise?

Angel: (doing victory dance) HA!

So that is what it feels like to exercise restraint, eh?

I am a little behind on keeping the website up to date, but I hope to remedy that this weekend.  But just to inform our loyal readers, the team is now “officially” up to 12 people now and “unofficially” 14!

Our latest additions are Nancy Padial, Lara Hutchinson, Sara Cornejo, Mason Hutchinson & Connor Futch.  We are also waiting for last years teammate, Dara Bartee, to show up on the team page.  She has already signed up for the race!

To see our team page, visit this link.

Just to show how diversified we are, we have 6 doing the marathon, 3 doing the half-marathon, and 4 doing the 5K.  And I think we will add to that before we are done.

Hopefully the team can keep all the Thank You messages coming in (which means donations to St. Jude!)  And maybe we can all start writing a little more on the blog to let everyone know how we are doing.

By the way, I am tired, sore and aching.  But other than that, things are great!  Thank you God for this little bit of cool weather as a carrot for the months of training ahead.

Okay, so no one is going to post there race report.  I have already covered the race on my Timbeaux site, but I figured I would get the ball rolling over here.

Except for about 21 minutes and 57 seconds last night, I had a blast!  It was great getting everyone together especially around the beer truck afterwards.  It was a shame that Louise couldn’t stay and visit for a while.  Of course, she brought Dara with her, so there wouldn’t have been any beer left for us.  Great to see Dara!  Great that she left us the beer!

Anyway, we will be checking race schedules for the next gathering.  Until then, great job everyone!

Well tonight is the Twilight Classic 5K in Baton Rouge.  And rumour has it that the entire Team Running on Faith will be there.  This will be the first time we have all gotten together, so it should be a blast.

Expect a few “race” reports to follow in the next couple of days!

I had a tough workout last night.  Actually, I had a really tough workout Monday night which left me in a pile on the floor of my truck hovering on the edge of a heat stroke.  No heat stroke.  Anyway, it wasn’t a pleasant workout.

So yesterday I had another tough one scheduled.  And 5 minutes after waking up yesterday (4:00 AM), I started thinking about how tough it would be.  “Man, it’s going to hurt.  Last time you crashed and burned on this workout.  What do you think you are, 17 again?  Or even 27 or 37 again?  Nobody cares if you just bail on the workout.”  And those thoughts jumped in and out of my head at various times during the day.

In the attempt to actually use my brain a little, I delayed my workout until about 6:30 pm in the hopes for a little cooler weather.  Or at least no sun frying me.  And after bringing Mason to drums, eating dinner, and sitting on the couch for a while, I was ready!  Ready to crawl in bed and go to sleep that is.  But I didn’t.  I got up, put on my running clothes and went outside.  And then I walked around for 5 minutes pretending to “stretch.”  Actually, I just did not want to hit the start button.  Because once you hit start, you can’t hit stop until you are done.

Eventually, I hit start.  I made it through the 15 minute warm up in pretty good shape.  The legs felt surprisingly good.  The breathing was even.  And the sun was easing lower in the sky.  Not bad.  And then I started the hard part: 30 minutes of steady state pain.  It took a couple of minutes to get into the narrow pace range my plan called for.  And when I did, it was not a comfortable “conversational” pace.  I was lucky to smile and grunt “ugghh” at other people on the road as I ran by.  This was going to be a long 30 minutes.

And then I found my mind over matter condition.  My body was hurting but not in dire straits.  And every time my focus would wander and my pace would drop a bit, I just had to think “faster” and I got back on track.  It was mentally exhausting to keep concentrating, but I started realizing that I could do this.  And once that happened, everything was just peachy.

It still hurt.  But along with the pain I found something positive.  This can be done.

During many of my extremely long races or training, I have found that on the other side of the pain is a level of joy that is hard to describe.  It is not the jumping up and down and screaming joy, but that quiet deep inside your chest warmth that is like a gentle pat on the back.  It is almost as if you can feel the words, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”  And then you realize that He was guiding you through the pain all along.

Every time I get a email with the subject line, “A sponsor had donated to St. Jude on your behalf,”  I get that same feeling of warmth.  And once again, He was guiding me along.

I don’t have AADD (Adult Attention Deficit Disorder).  I am usually pretty good at putting my full attention to a project or task until it is at least 90% finished.  I am a man so the last 10% usually drags out for several months or years.  Actually, there are many times when Christine says I have a one track mind, so how’s that for being focused?

Anyway, with all that seems to happen in life these days it is hard to stay focused on just one thing.  It is really impossible.  At work the other day, my boss and I were talking about projects in the shop.  He said we needed to concentrate on this one project.  When I brought up another project, he said we need to concentrate on it too.  I told him that was like trying to look forwards and backwards at the same time.  The only result will be whiplash.

That is how I feel about work, family, training, fundraising and everything else going on in the world.  I have constant whiplash.  And then I thought of the Bible passage from Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

It may never seem like there are enough hours in the day to do all that needs to be done.  There are.  The hard part is deciding what actually “needs” to be done.

I think that we need to use some of those hours helping the children of St. Jude find  “a time to heal, a time to laugh, a time to dance…“ And we need to be doing those things as well.

Hello World.

This weekend a possible Plan B developed.  For those who don’t know, my Plan A is to qualify for the Boston Marathon this December while running the St. Jude Marathon.  This would require me to run a 3:20:59 marathon or better which is an average of 7:40 per mile for the entire 26.2 miles!

Now normally I am not a Plan B type of person.  I have Plan A and that better work.  And similar to a square peg in a round hole, if it doesn’t work at first then I get a bigger hammer.  Plan A is the plan.  Period.  So why am I considering a Plan B with 18 weeks to go before the race?  Two reasons.

First, I have had a less than stellar week of running.  I may or may not talk about it on my Timbeaux site.  I am still pretty aggravated about it, but it is what it is.  And I can’t go back and do it again anyway.  But it did open my eyes to the difficulty of what I am trying to accomplish.

Second, my wife, Christine (Hardcore) may be doing another marathon.  And any race of that length I like to share the experience with her.  It is always much more fun to look back at a race and laugh (or cry) about something we both saw on the course or experienced.

So the possible Plan B is the Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans.  It is about 3 months after the St. Jude marathon, so I will have plenty of time to recover, regroup, and ramp up my training for another attempt at Boston.  The biggest question now is whether it is a Boston qualifying race or not.  Still working on that one.

By the way, if you haven’t donated to one of the incredible people on this team then do it now!